Category Archives: Ramblings & Updates

Oh hello there! I just thought I’d stop by and remind everyone that I still exist. Hope the new year is treating everyone well!

The last time I was here I was freaking out about my upcoming candidacy exam. Well, I’m happy to announce that I passed! 😀 I am officially a PhD candidate! And, I also have the great news of announcing that I won an NSF fellowship too! 😀 It’s a pretty good month if I don’t say so myself. Now if only my instrument and data would agree and give me nice results. O:

Anyway, as I’m trying to get back into the swing of things, my posting schedule may be a little bit hectic. I’m hoping that I’ll get an actual blog post up by next week talking about some of the grad school pro tips I’ve accumulated across this crazy adventure. I am also planning to talk about proposal writing, literature reviews, how to make a good powerpoint for a science talk and how to create a great NSF application packet!

Any objections? Or anything in particular you want me to talk about? Let me know! I hope to be back to (non-academic) writing soon enough.

It has come to another point in my life where I must throw in the towel and take a short hiatus from blog writing. Which, honestly, makes me really sad. Because this blog is something I take a lot of pride in and it’s become something I look forward to doing during the week! But lately, it’s been a bit difficult to write up quality posts on a weekly basis, while also keeping up with all the other things going on in my life right now. So, rather than forcing myself to churn out weekly material, I figured it was time for a break and for me to focus on, oh I don’t know, passing my candidacy exam.

Well, hello there! The quarter has officially ended in terms of classes! Yay! So, despite the fact that research is, of course, never ending, I can officially say I survived my first academic year of grad school! 😀

So recently, a lot has been happening in my life. Not just with grad school, but real actual adult life too. And I can honestly say that some days just end up being complete and utter chaos. It’s so frustrating! I curse the day when tiny Krystal in pig tails said she wanted to “grow up.” 0/10. Would not recommend.

Anyway, I have recently watched this video by Jenna Marbles and this video by Grace Helbig (because Youtube is my guilty pleasure) and I really liked the idea they had about expelling all that negative energy in hopes that some good vibes will replace them. So that’s exactly what I’m doing. I’m releasing all my recent adulting fails to the internet universe and hope that this will result in me becoming an actual functioning adult. (Or at the very least make someone feel better that they’re a better adult than I am…which isn’t hard.)

Hello everyone! I hope the new year has been treating you well so far!

So, I’ve realized that 2015 consisted of a lot of “growing up” and learning how to “adult.” It was weird, and sometimes scary and confusing, but I got through it. And, what better way to celebrate surviving another year than by sharing knowledge in hopes it can help you all survive another year too!

Below is a list (in no particular order) of things I wish I knew before I really started “adulting.” Now, I use the term “adulting” because doing adult things starts at different points of life for everyone. For some, it’s moving away from home to the dorms for college. For others, it’s getting a job after graduation. For me, it was putting on my big girl pants, moving out of my mom’s, renting an apartment with my boyfriend and starting grad school.

Either way, no matter what “adulting” means to you, here are some things that I wish I knew before I entered the “real world.”

But a lot of things have happened since then! For instance, I joined a research group! Wooo! As of November 2nd, I have officially become a graduate researcher. I even have a small project right now which involves looking at old data and confirming trends seen in Houston in order to try and compare it to what happens here in So. Cal…or at least that’s what I understood when it was explained to me. It has thus far involved reading papers I don’t really understand deeply enough and learning MATLAB which is a whole obstacle on its own…(No prior software experience except for LaTex.) I also now spend my days plotting random variables together to see if anything makes sense. Or, at least I would if I even knew what made sense in the first place…